art.stolnitz-on the importance of lord shaftesbury

8/13/2019 Art.stolnitz-On the Importance of Lord Shaftesbury

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On the Significance of Lord Shaftesbury in Modern Aesthetic TheoryAuthor(s): Jerome StolnitzReviewed work(s):Source: The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 43 (Apr., 1961), pp. 97-113Published by: Wileyfor The Philosophical Quarterly

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THEPHLOSOPHQU RTERLY

VOL. 11 No. 43 APRIL 1961

ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LORD SHAFTESBURYIN MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY

Cassirerhas it that Lord Shaftesbury " (founded) the first really com-prehensive and independent philosophy of the beautiful ",1 and that he isthe dominant figure in eighteenth-century British aesthetics.2 WhereasHippie, in his comprehensive survey of the period, excludes Shaftesburyon the grounds that his thought is lacking both in "intrinsic interest "3and historical importance.These opposing judgments typify the peculiar history of Shaftesbury'sreputation as an aesthetician. He exercised a profound influence on thecontinental, particularly the German thinkers of his century-Herder,Lessing, Schiller, Kant, Goethe.4 And he has always been highly esteemedby the Germans. Herder ranked him with Spinoza and Leibniz5; von Stein,in his history of modern aesthetics, pays more attention to Shaftesburythan to any other British thinker.6 In England, however, Shaftesbury hasbeen largely ignored. Even in his own age, " The times were out of joint

1Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Koelln and Pettegrove(Boston: Beacon, 1955), p. 312.2Ibid., pp. 312-313.3Walter John Hipple, jr., The Beautiful, The Sublime, and The Picturesque inEighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1957), p. 9.4Cf. G. Zart, Einfluss der englischen Philosophen seit Bacon auf die deutsche Philosophiedes 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1881), pp. 16, 97, 108-110; 0. F. Walzel, " Shaftesburyund das deutsches Geistesleben des 18. Jahrhunderts ", Germanisch-RomanischeMonatsschrift, I (1909), 416-417, 429 ff.6Walzel, op. cit., p. 431.6K. H. von Stein, Die Entstehung des Neueren Asthetik (Stuttgart, 1886).

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98 JEROME STOLNITZfor Shaftesbury's philosophy ".7 From the beginning of the eighteenthcentury to its end, British aesthetics was directed above all to the descriptiveanalysis of aesthetic experience. Such analysis, at its best, is marvellouslyacute and sensitive. But it could do its work only because " the new wayof ideas " had relieved aesthetics of its metaphysical commitments. Burke,whom Kant considered the ablest exponent of descriptive aesthetics,had no use for abstract speculation; he proceeds by " a diligent examinationof our passions in our own breasts ".8 Shaftesbury's aesthetic, on the con-trary, is a classic instance of what Fechner called aesthetics " von Obenherab ". Much of it is bound up with his high-level metaphysical principles,generally to its detriment. The metaphysics itself is, moreover, " specula-tive" in the grand manner : it is Idealistic, perhaps pantheistic; it makesout the world to be an ordered, telic unity in which evil is only illusory;and it defies empirical scrutiny. In a word, it is precisely the sort of con-struction which has generally been least congenial to the British temper.In his lifetime, a spiritual alien in his own time and land; much moreat home with Plato, the Romans, and Plotinus; very much the laudatortemporis acti; as a young man tutored by Locke, whom he later chargedwith ignoring "the greatest realities of things ",9 Shaftesbury, after hisdeath, has enjoyed his greatest reputation outside his native land.But this a pity. Such neglect fails to do justice to the man and it createsa great lacuna in our historical understanding. Shaftesbury is, I wouldurge, a uniquely important figure. For he sets into motion the idea which,more than any other, marks off modern from traditional aesthetics andaround which a great deal of the dialectic of modern thought has revolved,viz., the concept of " aesthetic disinterestedness ".10The first task of modern aesthetic theory was, if I may put it so, to createitself. It had to be shown that there is a body of data which is, in significantrespects, different from the data proper to other disciplines and whichtherefore is not explicable in terms of these other disciplines. The use of" aesthetics " to designate an independent field of study begins, of course'with Baumgarten, in the middle of the eighteenth century. But the bap-tizing is important chiefly as a symptom of the movement throughout thecentury to establish the autonomy of the aesthetic. Shaftesbury, in thefirst decade of the century, gives the lead.

Etymologically, 'aesthetic' refers to perceiving. 'Disinterestedness' describesa certain mode of perceiving. Its meaning will be analyzed later in the paper.7R. L. Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Hutchinson, 1951), p. 205;

cf., also, p. 209.8Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublimeand Beautiful, ed. Boulton (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 1.9Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Second Characters or the Language of Forms, ed.Rand (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1914), p. 178.1?Shaftesbury is also a chief source of the doctrine of " genius " which becomesprominent in later aesthetics. It is this feature of his thought that Cassirer comesdown on most heavily, op. cit., pp. 315 ff. Cf., also, Milton C. Nahm, The Artist asCreator (Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), p. 137. However, discussion of this theory liesbeyond the scope of the present paper.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 99At present, the crucial point is that disinterestedness is peculiar to one kindof experience. Because the experience is disinterested, it is significantlydifferent from such other experiences as garden variety perception or moralactivity or theoretical inquiry. The concepts which are adequate for thestudy of these activities will not do for it. It must be studied in its ownright. This is what aesthetics can call its own. Ultimately the subject-matter of aesthetics is taken to be the experience of disinterested perceptionand the nature and value of its objects.Once " disinterestedness " is installed at the centre of aesthetic theory,it gives rise to other ideas which further set off modern from traditionalaesthetics. I will mention some of the most striking of these. Probablythe most important, both in aesthetics and art criticism, is now so muchtaken for granted that it seems almost banal to mention it, viz., that thework of art must be evaluated in respect of its intrinsic structure andsignificance, not as a moral vehicle or a source of knowledge. It is worthreminding ourselves that in traditional thought, moral edification, " truth ",or the dignity of the " real life " model " imitated " in the work, legislatefor the value of the art-object. That the work is autonomous and unique,and that it therefore defies such extra-aesthetic criteria, is an idea whichcomes into prominence only after the concept of " disinterestedness " hasestablished itself. For it is just in its relation to disinterested perceptionthat the work is autonomous-because it is attended to for its own sake-and unique-because such perception dwells upon and relishes its qualitativeindividuality. Moreover,the conception of art in aesthetic theory now takesa new direction. " Art " comes to be defined in terms of the attitude ofdisinterested perception, either in the spectator, e.g., Bell, or transposed tothe mind of the creative artist, e.g., Croce. It is by referenceto the aestheticattitude that other thinkers distinguish "fine" art from "the arts ofutility " or " entertainment ".

Finally, there is a really intriguing consequence, one which has notbeen sufficiently remarked, viz., the immeasurably expanded conception ofthose objects which can be "aesthetic objects ". If " aesthetic object "means "object of disinterested perception ", then nothing is a priori de-barred. It becomes an empirical question whether the aesthetic attitudeis aroused and sustained by any particular object. Those movements inthe arts which encourage interest in things that are ugly or macabre orsimply prosaic push back the boundaries of taste till finally every conceivableobject seems to qualify. This is, of course, a very complicated chapter inthe history of ideas, but its outlines can be suggested by calling attentionto the decline and fall of the category of " beauty " in modern aesthetics.In much of traditional thought this is the sole value-category and onlythose objects which are beautiful are aesthetic objects; those which areugly are excluded. In the modernperiod, " beauty " becomes less importantas such categories as " the sublime ", " the expressive ", and finally "theugly " itself are admitted as categories of (positive) value. " Beauty "



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100 JEROME STOLNITZthen becomes just one among other sub-classes of the class, "objects ofdisinterested perception ".Under such names as 'psychical distance', "disinterestedness" hasbecome a commonplace in our time. The concept is held in common byaestheticians of very different persuasions, whose views on other issues arewidely divergent. Yet the concept is nowhere to be found in classical andmedieval aesthetics.11 It is Shaftesbury who claims the distinction of beingthe first thinker to bring the phenomenon of disinterestedness to light andanalyzing it. Not that he drew out all the consequences which I havejust sketched or that he was even aware of them. Thus, he himself employsmoral and cognitive criteria of evaluation which were later repudiated inthe name of his own concept. But this is nothing new in the history of ideas.

I want to turn now from history to philosophy. First, however, I shouldprobably speak to an objection which might be raised against any criticalscrutiny of Shaftesbury's thought, viz., that this is precisely the kind ofphilosophy for which critical analysis is impertinent (in both senses) andfutile. Both in its manner-Shaftesbury's writing is discursive, rambling,vague, often rhapsodic-and its matter-the exaltation of that whichpasseth conceptual understanding-it defies analysis. And Shaftesburymakes no apologies "The most ingenious way of becoming foolish is bya system ".12Still we cannot understand the historical significance of Shaftesbury'sideas unless we understand their meaning and import within his theory.And it is no less but no more true of him than of any other philosopherthat,philosophical discourse being what it is, the content of the ideas does notdisclose itself until we prod them and shove them about. But there is an-other consideration. Shaftesbury has doubtless had so little reputationamong his own countrymen largely because his writings seem to them amere Schwdrmerei. (There were already complaints on this score in theeighteenth century.13) The tough-minded ignore him, the tender-mindedare lulled into insensibility by him, and in neither case is there any intel-lectual gain. Only if we take Shaftesbury both seriously and criticallycan we bring out what is in him and thereby establish his " significance",both as an aesthetician of intrinsic interest and in the history of moderntheory. I

I have said that the chief impulse in the modern period is to establishthe autonomy of the aesthetic and that Shaftesbury is one of the primemovers. But though this may be true of Shaftesbury's influence, it is cer-tainly not true, at least without serious qualification, of Shaftesbury'sphilosophy as he presented it. In some of the most central phases of his

"The intimation of the concept at Summa Theologica, Ia, 2ae, quaest. 27, art. 1,is worthy of mention.12Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics, ed. Robertson (London: GrantRichards, 1900), I, 189. All page references in the text are to this work.13Cf.Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (London, 1809), I, 222-225.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 101

thought, Shaftesbury denies that there is anything peculiar to aestheticphenomena, and he does so in precisely the manner of the classical, Idealisttradition to which he is so much indebted, i.e., by identifying the aestheticwith other orders of being and thereby collapsing the distinctions betweenthem. Thus, the famous Platonic triad.14 And thus, too, Shaftesbury:"(Beauty) and good . . . are still one and the same " (II, 128).1. This dictum occurs in the dialogue The Moralists. Here Shaftesburyis chiefly concerned with the " true good " for man and, as in Plato, thephilosopher's spokesman, here Theocles, is trying to bring Philocles, thetype of " the unthinking world " (II, 130), to a realization of the differencebetween such goodness and its counterfeit. Shaftesbury himself providesthe footnote which explains the word 'still' in the sentence I have quoted.It refers back to the discussion in which Theocles urges upon Philocles," you who are such a judge of beauty ", that there is nothing " so fair asfriendship . . . or so charming as a generous action ". He then goes on tosay : " What would it be, therefore, if all life were in reality but one con-tinued friendship ? . . . Here surely would be that fixed and constant goodyou sought" (II, 36).Two propositions are put forth in this passage. They may be stated as(a) " Of all beautiful things, nothing is more beautiful than a benevolentcharacter "15 and (b) " The summum bonum is the possession of such acharacter ".16 Now if Shaftesbury, in making the cross-reference, thoughtthat these propositions, singly or in tandem, are equivalent in meaning to" Beauty and good are one and the same ", then he was clearly mistaken.For, apart from anything else, both (a) and (b) have to do with the super-lative or most exemplary order of goodness or beauty, whereas the initialproposition has to do with beauty and goodness generically. One mightargue about the truth or falsehood of (a) and (b), but that is not to ourpurpose. All that we have to see is that neither proposition does or, in pointof logic, could do anything so drastic as to " destroy the autonomy of theaesthetic ". Proposition (a) is a first-order assertion about those thingswhich are, in fact, beautiful; proposition (b) is not an aesthetic propositionof any sort, for it includes no aesthetic predicates. Neither one asserts orimplies the denial of the view that there are certain phenomena which arepeculiar to and constitutive of the realm of the aesthetic.And yet, here as elsewhere, it is not enough merely to indict the philo-sopher for being less rigorous than he ought to be. We have still to explainthe original dictum. For, despite his cross-reference,(a) and (b)are not whatShaftesbury intends by " Beauty and good are one and the same ". Themeaning of the assertion can be brought out if we ask how Shaftesburygets from "Nothing is more beautiful than friendship " to " The highestgood for man is to possess a virtuous character ". The suppressed premisses4Philebus 64e-65a.

15Cf. II, 69: " (The) beauty of virtue [is] the supreme and sovereign beauty ";cf., also, I, 338, II, 270-271.1"Cf.II, 280.



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102 JEROME STOLNITZcan be taken from other places in his philosophy: Friendship (along withother modes of benevolence) is a harmony between human beings; byextension, it stands for a character and an entire life which are organizedharmoniously. The latter includes the classical ideal of inner harmony,whereby a man so organizes his emotions and impulses that he achieves" order, peace, and concord " (II, 144) within himself. Now, it is becauseof this harmony that Shaftesbury calls such a life " beautiful ". For har-mony is, universally, what constitutes beauty: " What is beautiful is har-monious and proportionable" (II, 268). But we are left with the question:Why is the ordered life the summum bonumfor man ?There are two answers in the text. The first is that we derive " im-mediate satisfaction and genuine content" (I, 334)17 from a benevolentdisposition, the actions to which it gives rise, and its effects upon others.Shaftesbury has it that " more than nine-tenths of whatever is enjoyed inlife " (I, 299) can be attributed to " the pleasures of sympathy " and-hehas no qualms about adding-the esteem of others which the benevolentman enjoys. No man feels greater satisfaction than the benevolent man.This answer, however, we can dismiss. The life of " satisfaction andcontent " is not what Shaftesbury means by " the fixed and constant good ".Such an interpretation would be, on two grounds, inconsistent with themost basic motives in his thought : (1) When, as in the colloquy with Philo-cles, Shaftesbury describes the life and character of the consummatehuman being whom he calls " the virtuoso ", he is working not only withthe aesthetic category of " beauty " and what we can call the " axiological "category of " goodness ", but also the moral category of " virtue ". Suchtraits of character as friendship and generosity are not only harmoniousand therefore beautiful. They are also morally estimable and praiseworthy(I, 244). Similarly, selfishness, hostility, etc., are divisive and thereforeodious and also vicious. Nor could they be otherwise. Virtue and wicked-ness, like beauty and ugliness, are intrinsic to benevolence and self-interest(cf. I, 227).18 The relation is, in each case, a necessary one. Now it is acardinal tenet of Shaftesbury's thought that the virtuous man and only thevirtuous man can live the good life. This too is intended as a necessaryproposition. But if we hold that " the good life " means " the life of satis-faction and content ", then this tenet must lose its necessity. For the relationbetween virtuous disposition and actions and the satisfaction which followsupon them, is a matter of fact. Probably no thesis is more basic to Shaftes-bury's ethics than that the concept of " virtue " is logically independent ofthat of the consequences to the agent (cf. I, 66, 275). When Shaftesburytries to show that the unselfish man feels pleasure, he does so by givingempirical arguments (I, 282 ff.). In this, he is, of course, trying to beatHobbes at his own game and this doubtless had some heuristic appeal tocontemporary audiences. Nevertheless, on Shaftesbury's own showing, it

17Cf.,also, II, 143.18Thih s qualified at I, 248 ff., 317 ff.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 103is not impossible that the virtuous man should experience less satisfactionthan the wicked one.

(2) If " the good for man " is taken to mean " the life of ' satisfactionand content ' ", then Shaftesbury will have to abandon the thesis, " Beautyand good are one and the same ". Harmony is a property of things'9;" satisfaction and content " refers to feelings in us. To couple the twowould be for Shaftesbury a particularly offensive category-mistake.Satisfaction, no matter how intense or lasting, does not constitute thesummum bonum. It is, at best, an empirical concomitant. What we needis some other conception of the good life which will not be vulnerable tothe foregoing objections.I think that we find it when Shaftesbury speaks of " that in which thenature of man is satified, and which alone must be his good " (II, 149). Itake 'satisfied' here to be synonymous with 'realized' or 'fulfilled'. Howdoes man fulfill himself ? Shaftesbury says that " his dignity and highestinterest " is to be found in the experience of beauty (II, 143). But suchexperience is not primarily, let alone solely, of some object, already formedand harmonious. It is itself plastic and creative. In Shaftesbury's strikingphrase, " the beautifying, not the beautified, is the really beautiful" (II,131). The " beautifying " here is of one's own life. The virtuoso is the manwho cultivates the attributes of fellow-feeling and generosity. He therebynecessarily informs his character, his bearing, and his conduct with orderand grace. Of such a life Shaftesbury says: "This is a harmonyindeed ".20If it is still meaningful to ask why this constitutes the good life for man,then the answer can only be found in the implicit major premise whichShaftesbury took over from the classical tradition-" Follow Nature ".Nature is the paradigm of value because it " excludes all real ill " (II, 57).When the virtuoso " beautifies " his life and becomes thereby, in Shaftes-bury's figure,

" Promethean ", he is patterning his life upon the order ofthe world created by God. " Like that sovereign artist or universal plasticnature, he forms a whole, coherent and proportioned in itself" (I, 136).The " interior numbers ", i.e., the inner harmony of his life, is thereforean " imitation of nature ". The highest good for man is to imbue the micro-cosm, his life, with the " vital principle " (II, 110) which animates the " all-good and perfect work " (II, 114) of God.We have made an excursion away from the aesthetic. But this was,in the nature of the case, imperative. The chief question was and remains,whether there is anything which can be distinguished as " the aesthetic "to talk about. And now the answer seems clearly to be negative. WhenShaftesbury says, " Beauty and good are one and the same ", he meanswhat he says. For what he means is that both beauty and goodness areconstituted by one and the same property (or process), viz., harmony.

19Cf.below, p. 112.20Shaftesbury, Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, ed. Rand(London : Sonnenschein, 1900), p. 192.



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104 JEROME STOLNITZIndeed, it is not so much that Shaftesbury is identifying beauty and good-ness. This way of putting it is, I think, accurate enough, but it does notbring out the true purport of his own thought and of the metaphysicaltradition for which he is speaking.It is, I believe, more illuminating if we take Shaftesbury to be sayingsomething like, " Harmony is all there really is ". Faithful to its Idealistforebears, his philosophy is essentially a celebration of the surpassing good-ness of the world-order. To one who is gripped by the vision which I haverendered so clumsily, the whole question of the relation between the variouscategories of value must seem faintly silly and irrelevant, because the verydistinction among the categories is itself silly and misleading. They are,at best, imperfect entia rationis. To one who sees synoptically and thereforeclearly, they fragment or relativize the pervasive goodness of things. " Thegreat and general ONE of the world " (II, 102) is indivisible and ultimately,one supposes, ineffable. The categorial distinctions must be collapsed.That is why so much of Shaftesbury, and the Idealist tradition generally,consists in an infuriatingly long string of identities-" beauty-is-goodness-is-truth-is-reality-is-etc.".2. The string is pieced together by ignoring (or by failing to understand)the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity.Many have thought that harmony is one of the properties of things thatare beautiful or even that it is the most " essential " of such properties;and there is no trouble about saying " His life was like a work of art ".But claiming that beauty and goodness are " one and the same " startlesus. It is worth the philosopher's while to make the claim, the propositionis, psychologically, a " significant " one, precisely because we had thoughtthat beauty and goodness, whatever they may have in common, occupysignificantly different habitats. They are different facts, even differentkinds of facts. " This is beautiful " and " this is good " generally, at least,make very different claims and each often occurs in contexts in which theother would be inappropriate.We have a common-sense awareness of what is peculiar to the realm ofthe aesthetic. We talk and think and feel about paintings and cloud-formations as we do not about other things. Indeed, does not Shaftesburyhimself employ and trade upon this awareness when he proclaims thatthe world is an aesthetic whole ? He says this in order that we should seethings differently, revise our beliefs about the way the world wags andhave other feelings about it. If we are persuaded by him, our beliefs andfeelings about one area of reality are transposed onto the totality of it. Butthe metaphor can succeed only because we had, to begin with, a sense ofwhat is native to the aesthetic, as opposed to the non-aesthetic.And yet the identity-statement which is basic to Shaftesbury's world-view destroys the very distinctions which inspired the world-view in thefirst place. Having climbed up the ladder, Shaftesbury wishes not merelyto kick it away but to deny that it exists.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 105This is an interesting metaphysical strategy, by no means peculiar to

Shaftesbury. But whatever may be true at the level of assertions beginning" Reality is -", at any less lofty level the original distinctions will notremain fuzzed over. There is a native habitat for the aesthetic and it mustbe sought out there. So Shaftesbury carries out his examination of thekind of perception which distinguishes aesthetic appreciation. Such per-ception may be turned upon moral action and character but this is peraccidens. Shaftesbury also cites scenes and objects in nature and mathe-matical objects. His analysis thereby sets off aesthetics from ethics. Itmight be added that the analysis of aesthetic perception is more original,interesting and important than the metaphysic, and in this respect, too,Shaftesbury is not alone among metaphysicians.

II1. The use of "disinterested" to describe aesthetic perception firstbecomes widespread after Kant, who spoke of that which satisfies " withoutinterest " (ohne Interesse). Shaftesbury characteristically uses the wordwhen speaking of the character of the moral agent or of moral judgment

(cf., e.g., I, 97, 231, 232). However, the whole force of the identity-statementis to assimilate the moral to the aesthetic, and conversely. The most obviousexample is the doctrine of " moral sense ", inaugurated by Shaftesbury,which likens moral judgment to aesthetic perception. Similarly, the conceptof " disinterestedness " originates, as the word shows, in Shaftesbury'sethics. However, it becomes properly aesthetic after a somewhat deviousevolution out of the ethics, whose course I now wish to trace.We begin with the term 'interest'. As Shaftesbury uses it, the termhas no univocal meaning. We must distinguish what I shall call its axiologicalsense from its conative sense. In the former sense, the interest either of anindividual (I, 243; cf., also, I, 244, 338) or of society (I, 258, 282) is its" true " and lasting good. In the latter sense, it is a desire for what one takesto be good (I, 317). The axiological sense is therefore presuppositional tothe conative, but it is the conative sense, as we shall see, that is the importantone for aesthetics. In the conative sense, interest always involves agencyor a disposition to agency. It will therefore occur along with some activeverb, e.g., " He takes an interest in -", " He has an interest in -". Thisis not true of the axiological sense. In this sense, " interest " refers to somestate of affairs, some condition of being, which has nothing necessarily todo with what men desire. This is most obvious in those cases in which theobject of interest, in the conative sense, is only speciously good. Or whenwe say, without inconsistency, " It is in his own interest (axiological) to dox, but he has no interest (conative) in doing x ".There is a corresponding duplicity in the meaning of " interestedness "In the axiological sense, a man is " interested " when some event or choicebears upon his well-being. However, this is an objective, causal fact whichneed not make any difference to what he desires and chooses. Indeed, he



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106 JEROME STOLNITZmay not even be aware of the fact; he may be informed that he is " aninterested party ". This meaning is fairly common in ordinary discourse,but Shaftesbury seems never to use the term in this way. He uses " inter-ested " to refer to deliberate actions of a certain kind or to the propensityof characterto performsuch actions, viz., actions or agents which are selfish.So Shaftesbury speaks of " interestedness or self-love " (I, 317). An actionis " interested ", in the conative sense, when it is performed out of thedesire to promote the well-being of the agent. I will return to the formermeaning in a moment, but for the present let us consider Shaftesbury's useof the term.What is the opposite of an " interested " action, i.e., what is the meaningof " disinterested action " ? Much of Shaftesbury's writing is a polemicagainst Hobbesian ethics. He wishes to show that men can and do performunselfish actions and that it is, indeed, " natural " (I, 280) for them to doso. He therefore opposes to those actions which are performed out of (in-differently) "interest " or "self-interest ", such actions as those of loveand friendship (I, 281). Here the agent seeks "the good and interest ofhis species and community" (I, 315). Shaftesbury seems never to use'disinterested' in this way, but it would follow from the foregoing thatthe term applies to acts of benevolence.It is clear that, if this is the meaning of " disinterestedness", the con-cept is of no use whatever for aesthetics. Whatever it may mean to say thatthe aesthetic percipient is " disinterested ", the locution certainly does notmean that he is seeking to promote social well-being.This sense of " disinterested" was arrived at by taking the opposite of" action for the sake of personal well-being " to be " action for the sake ofsocial well-being ". But there is another way to construe the opposite of"selfish". Instead of "unselfish" (= "altruistic "), it can be "non-selfish " or, to use a less awkward and more telling word, " impersonal ".Now the nuclear meaning of " disinterested " is privative, i.e., " not moti-vated by self-seeking ", and this is further specified by the context in whichthe term occurs.

Sometimes the previous meaning, "benevolent ", may be intended.More commonly, both in ordinary usage and in Shaftesbury (cf. I, 252)," impartial " or " without bias " is the salient meaning. A man can there-fore say without inconsistency, "I am an interested party, but I shalljudge disinterestedly" and others can believe him. He is "interested"in the axiological sense but this, as was pointed out earlier, is independentof what he desires. His " disinterestedness " has to do with his desiresand motives.The nuclear meaning is preserved when Shaftesbury speaks of "thedisinterested love of God " (II, 55), for he opposes this to " (serving) God... for interest merely" (II, 55). "Disinterestedness" is here whollydistinct from " benevolence ". Shaftesbury is not saying that one shouldlove God with the intention of furthering the common good. Nor is the



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 107meaning here that which is appropriate to " disinterested judge ", thoughit is not unrelated to the latter. Shaftesbury says that when one loves Goddisinterestedly, one loves God simply for His own sake (II, 55), becauseof " the excellence of the object " (II, 56).This passage brings us close to the aesthetically relevant meaning of"disinterestedness ". Perception cannot be disinterested unless the spec-tator forsakes all self-concern and therefore trains attention upon the objectfor its own sake. However, before we proceed with the analysis, the questionmight be raised whether we are justified in taking Shaftesbury's accountof the proper approach to God to be an instance of aesthetic experience.The foregoing discussion21 provides the answer: Shaftesbury conceives ofGod and of His handiwork, Nature, on the model of the aesthetic. Theirharmony and therefore their " beauty " (II, 69) is what is most importantabout them. It is in unmistakably aesthetic terms that Theocles apostro-phizes Nature: "0 glorious nature . .. whose contemplation [brings]such delight; whose every single work affords an ampler scene, and is anobler spectacle than all which ever art presented " (II, 98). We wouldnowadays take works of art to be the most obvious examples of aestheticobjects. For various reasons, however, including that just cited, Shaftes-bury tends generally to depreciate art. (It might be noted that he is by nomeans unique in this respect, in his own time. It is not until the close ofthe eighteenth century that the notion of " fine art" becomes clearlyestablished in British aesthetics.)Thus we also find Shaftesbury's account of aesthetic disinterestednessin an acute and important passage in which he speaks of mathematicalobjects. He says that " The admiration, joy, or love turns wholly uponwhat is exterior and foreign to ourselves " (I, 296). Again, there is no con-cern for self. The act of perception " relates not in the least to any privateinterest of the creature, nor has for its object any self-good or advantageof the private system" (I, 296). Shaftesbury goes on to give a terse anddecisive reply to those who were later to protest against the concept of" disinterestedness ", " Oh, but don't you listen to the music for the sakeof the pleasure you're going to get ? ": ". . . though the reflected joy orpleasure which arises from the notice of this pleasure once perceived, maybe interpreted a self-passion or interested regard, yet the original satisfactioncan be no other than what results from the love of truth, proportion, orderand symmetry in the things without " (I, 296).It should be remarked of this passage also, as of the one quoted pre-viously, that the concept of "private interest ", which first comes intoShaftesbury's thought implicated in the egoism-altruism controversy, nowtakes on a different import. It is opposed, not to benevolence, but to thefalling away of self-concern. Following this lead, aestheticians who comeafter Shaftesbury make explicit two further characteristics of disinterestedperception. First, as the ethical question withdraws, it takes with it the

21Cf.,above, p. 103.



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108 JEROME STOLNITZwhole notion of " practical " action, i.e., action performed as a means, forthe sake of the consequences which it brings into being. The bettermentof society is as little relevant as promoting " private interest ". Aestheticperception looks to no consequences ulterior to itself. Moreover, thoughShaftesbury has shown that, with the abandonment of self-concern, atten-tion is concentrated upon the object, there is a further respect in whichself-concern drops away. As Schopenhauer was later to put it, one "losesoneself in the object ".22 The phrase hits off the phenomenology of at leasta good deal of aesthetic experience. The images, thoughts and emotionsaroused in the aesthetic spectator do not call attention to themselves or tothe proprietary self. The awareness of the duality of self and object whichis implicit in most experience recedes or disappears. In this respect, theexperience which is, for a variety of reasons, often said to be " subjective "or " personal" is anything but that.The preceding paragraph goes beyond Shaftesbury. But the elaborationof " aesthetic disinterestedness" in his successors unpacks what is alreadyimplicit in his account. The passages quoted above, along with those tobe quoted in the next section, exhibit what is at the heart of disinterestedperception.It is a classic instance in the history of ideas of the deviousness withwhich an idea can come into being and make its way that this concept of" aesthetic disinterestedness " originates in a now dated controversy overethics and religion, in a philosopher who was trying to combat what hetook to be the pernicious doctrines of selfishness in ethics and instrumental-ism in religion.2. With whatever variations, this concept is to be found in Kant,Schopenhauer, Croce, and indeed throughout the modern period. Yet therehas been profound disagreement over the question, Are only certain objectsproperly the objects of disinterested perception and, if so, which arethey ? The dialectic of much of modern aesthetics can be understood inrelation to just this question. E.g., Prall's theory of " sensuous surface "and the formalism of Bell and Fry are devoted to showing that only a fairlynarrowclass of objects is properly aesthetic. Shaftesbury's way of answeringthe question prefiguresthe later dialectic.If we take it common-sensically, the most obvious examples of aestheticobjects are colours, sounds, and other elementary sensory objects. A colour-patch which does not function as a sign lends itself most readily to dis-interested attention. What else is there to do with it other than "justlook " at it? The pristine interest of the child in sights, sounds and texturesseems the very paradigm of aesthetic perception, free from all those impulseswhich subvert aesthetic experience and convert it into something quitedifferent. That is why there is such great plausibility in Prall's thesis that" as we leave [the] surface in our attention ... we depart from the typicallyaesthetic attitude ".23

22The World as Will and Idea, Bk. III, Second Aspect, sec. 34.23D. W. Prall, Aesthetic Judgment (New York: Crowell, 1929), p. 20.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 109And indeed, Shaftesbury seems to side with common sense-at leastwhen he is not expounding his official theory. When he describes moral

perception on the model of the aesthetic, he illustrates the latter by sensoryawareness, whence the rubric, " moral sense " : " No sooner the eye opensupon figures, the ear to sounds, than straight the beautiful results and graceand harmony are known and acknowledged " (II, 137). And again: " Thecase is the same in the mental or moral subjects as in the ordinary bodiesor common subjects of sense " (I, 251). But for all this, Shaftesbury, likea great many later aestheticians, rejects what seems to be the most obviousand exemplary aesthetic object. In his official theory, he excludes thesensory from the realm of the aesthetic.The locus classicus is a passage in The Moralists. At the outset, thepassage reiterates what Shaftesbury has already said about disinterestedness.He begins by speaking of the " absurdity . . . in seeking the enjoymentelsewhere than in the subject loved " (II, 126). He then offers an exampleof " interested regard":" Imagine then . . . if being taken with the beauty of the ocean,which you see yonder at a distance, it should come into your headto seek how to command it, and, like some mighty admiral, ridemaster of the sea, would not the fancy be a little absurd ? " (II, 126).The enjoyment which would arise from " possessing " the ocean is " verydifferent from that which should naturally follow from the contemplationof the ocean's beauty " (II, 127). Shaftesbury goes on to adduce other,somewhat less strained, examples of objects which arouse " eager desires,wishes and hopes " (II, 127), viz., land, the fruit of trees, and what he dis-creetly calls "human forms ". These do not " (satisfy) by mere view "(II, 128).Thus far the passage is noteworthy chiefly for the claim that aestheticenjoyment is sui generis, which serves further to differentiate the aestheticfrom other modes of experience. Apart from this, the only point is simplythat wherethere is a desire to possess, perception is interested in the conativesense. Note that Shaftesbury cannot hold that the objects which he citesare inherentlyanti-aesthetic. On his metaphysic, everything in nature mightbe apprehended aesthetically; moreover, as we have seen, this is notablytrue of one's fellow humans. In contemporary jargon, whether an objectis aesthetic or non-aesthetic depends upon the attitude with which it isapproached.In the immediately succeeding speech, however, Theocles draws twodistinctions. The first is that between aesthetic enjoyment and appeasingbodily desire. The second is that between objects which we " might properlycall . . . truly fair " and " the objects of sense " (II, 128). The distinctionsare of different kinds. The first has to do with gratification which we feel;the second, with objects of which we are aware. Yet they are in appositionto each other. Veritably aesthetic enjoyment can be had only in the faceof those objects which are "truly fair ". Analogously, "the objects ofsense " cannot be enjoyed aesthetically for they only satisfy material desire.



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110 JEROME STOLNITZHence the argument is that the senses are always in the service of the"lower " or " material" appetites and therefore, unlike reason, can never

apprehend an object disinterestedly. So Shaftesbury speaks later of " whatappeases provoked sense, and satisfies the brutish part " (II, 143). This isan old argument. Indeed, Shaftesbury employs the related Socratic argu-ment24that we do not call dishes which are good in the eating " beautiful "(II, 142). The food is relished only because one is hungry. Hence the eatingis exactly comparableto the experience of the man who looks upon the landor the fruit-tree covetously.Therefore the argument that "x is perceived by the senses " entails"x does not 'satisfy by mere view' (is not an aesthetic object) " restsupon an assumption about the functioning of sense-perception. If theassumption is, in fact, false, the inference is invalid and there is, so far,no reason to exclude sensory objects from the area of the aesthetic. Butis not the assumption indeed false ? There is presumptive evidence if wetake together the various theories of the " higher " and " lower " senseswhich have been put forth since Plato. We find no agreement among themon where the distinction should be drawn. Sometimes sight alone is setoff from the other senses; most commonly, sight and hearing are takento be the "higher " senses; sometimes only taste and touch are excluded,on the ground that they are not " distance receptors ". Once it is grantedthat some organ of sense can be the vehicle of aesthetic perception, Shaftes-bury's assumption is impugned; and in view of the disagreements amongthe theorists, there is a strong likelihood that any sense-organ can functionin this way. But even if we apply Shaftesbury's argument to touch, tasteand smell, where it would seem to be strongest, it is hardly tenable. It is aplain fact that we can and do relish the aroma of tea and the texture ofshrimp in such a way that " the excellence of the object " and that aloneengrosses our attention. There is no desire ulterior to the act of perception.The object " satisfies by mere view ". There is no concern for " self-good "and, indeed, such concern would drain away the aesthetic quality of theexperience. The starving man is not the exemplary food-taster. Hence theobject of sense, sometimes at least, fulfills Shaftesbury's original specifica-tions for aesthetic experience. There is no warrant for excluding sensoryobjects straight across the board.However, the above argument is not Shaftesbury's main argumentagainst the senses. We have seen that Shaftesbury identifies beauty withharmony.25 His argument is that harmony can never be apprehended bythe senses. Even if the senses were employed disinterestedly, they wouldappreciate nothing more than a pleasing colour or an engaging sound. Butharmony or " interior numbers " is an inner coherence which is never dis-closed merely on the surface of things. Beauty is " never in the matter. . .never in body itself, but in the form " (II, 132). So even in those pas-

24GreaterHippias 299.25Cf., above, p. 102.



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LORD SHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 111

sages quoted earlier,26 in which Shaftesbury describes moral perception onthe model of sensation, he does not hold that the bodily eye grasps the beautyof the object. The object enters awareness through the sense-organ, but itsbeauty is only discerned subsequent to physical sensation "by a plaininternal sensation " (II, 63). " Beauty, belonging not to body, nor havingany principle or existence except in mind and reason, is alone discoveredand acquired by this diviner part" (II, 144).It is the thesis of this paper that Shaftesbury's theory is a watershedin the history of aesthetics. Any such theory will perforce embody boththe old and the new ways of thinking, not usually without tension betweenthem. The identification of beauty and harmony, which is ubiquitous inGreek and Renaissance thought, is the old way of thinking. Shaftesbury,by introducing the concept of " disinterestedness ", creates a new centreof gravity in aesthetic theory. The tension between the two arises in de-fining the field of the aesthetic. If it is done in the old way, i.e., if it embracesonly certain things or certain properties of things, then the field will befar narrower than if it includes all objects of disinterested perception." Disinterestedness " is, as I suggested earlier, biassed towards a catholicand inclusive conception of the aesthetic; "harmony" is considerablymore exclusive and aristocratic.

As between the two, Shaftesbury opts for tradition. He brings theconcepts together by adding a further specification to disinterested percep-tion. Since harmony is the aesthetic property, such perception is, he holds,directed solely to the formal aspects of things (cf. I, 296).There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in this. But if we want anempirically faithful account of disinterested perception, this specificationis, I suggest, gratuitous and excessively restrictive. Cannot other aspectsof things be looked at disinterestedly ? Shaftesbury has not shown thatthis is impossible if, as I have urged, the previous argument is untenable.We may grant the beauty of form and even that it is a " higher " beauty.But if we consider the things that men have looked at disinterestedly, wewill make room for other beauties, e.g., " material beauty ". Or, if harmonypre-empts the category of beauty altogether, we can speak of what is" pretty " or " sublime ". The latter terms denote objects which, in differentways, lack harmony, but which are, nonetheless, objects of disinteresteddelight. Indeed, at a number of places, Shaftesbury himself says, not thatsurface properties cannot be beautiful, but that they are of a lower orderof beauty (cf. II, 126, 130, 144, 270-271).

The concept of " disinterestedness " has no built-in limitations upon thenature of the objects that can be admired " by mere view ". Some recentaestheticians have gone so far as to say that any object whatever can bean object of aesthetic perception. What Shaftesbury seems to be doing isto impose a limitation upon disinterestedness ab extra, on behalf of the sortof beauty which he esteems most highly. His metaphysic is the villain of26Cf.,above. p. 109.



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112 JEROME STOLNITZthe piece. Like that of Plato and Plotinus, it invokes the presence of theinvisible kingdoms which lie behind things merely seen and it is a pleaagainst preoccupationwith the shadows. Whence the exaltation of the formalover the sensory. But this bias of the metaphysic blunts Shaftesbury'sinsight into the nature of aesthetic perception and distorts his account of it.Which points a moral for the study of later aesthetic philosophers:When they exclude certain objects from the field of the aesthetic, is it be-cause they have shown, as Shaftesbury, in the earlier argument, tried toshow, that these objects, in their very nature, are recalcitrant to disinterestedperception ? Or is it because, like Shaftesbury in the current argument,they deliberately narrow the range of aesthetic vision, in order to arrogatethe term " aesthetic " to selected objects, possessing certain properties orin a certain artistic style, to which they are especially addicted ?The old and the new ways of thinking also pull in opposite directionsin Shaftesbury's theory of evaluation. Shaftesbury has said that we canknow and respond to the beauty of a thing only if our perception is disin-terested. We do not appreciate the ocean or the fruit-tree if we seek topossess or use it. It would follow that the judgment "x is beautiful " canbe confirmedonly by the deliverance of aesthetic perception and in no otherway. Yet Shaftesbury will not accept this conclusion. The faculty of aes-thetic perception is "plain internal sensation ". Such sensation mustneeds share the characteristics of bodily sensation, on which it is modelled;it is immediate and non-reflective; it has no use for " principles "; and itis incorrigible. As a faculty of evaluation and taste it is, in a word, anti-nomian. Shaftesbury foresees with dismay the consequences which someof his successors were to proclaim with glee. He brings into aesthetics theconcept of "aesthetic perception "-" barely seeing and admiring " (II,270n.). But just because it is " barely seeing and admiring ", the experiencehas a brute, obdurate finality and irrationality about it. Can it be the soleand ultimate court of appeal on questions of aesthetic value ? No morethan in ethics (I, 227), however, will Shaftesbury abandon his convictiouin a " fixed standard ". Again he echoes Plato : ". . . harmony is harmonyby nature, let men judge ever so ridiculously of music " (I, 227).Shaftesbury extricates himself, but only at the cost of self-contradiction.We found him saying earlier that, as soon as the object is apprehended," straight the beautiful results and grace and harmony are known andacknowledged". When he faces the problems of evaluation, he contendsthat the presence of beauty in a thing is disclosed, not to intuitive aware-ness, but to reflective criticism. Beauty is found only in what " consequen-tially and by reflection pleases the mind, and satisfies the thought andreason .27 Similarly he says that it is " alone " by " the criticising orexamining art " that we " are able to discover the true beauty and worthof every object " (II, 257). When Shaftesbury develops this line mostassiduously, notably in his last work, Second Characters,the judgment of

27SecondCharacters, p. 61; cf., also, p. 144.



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LORD SIHAFTESBURY AND MODERN AESTHETIC THEORY 113art becomes a matter wholly of appeal to " rules ". Then Shaftesbury be-comes just another neo-classical critic and, it might be added, not a terriblygood one, for his rules are markedly unoriginal and stilted.

Here, as on the question of setting limits to the area of the aesthetic,Shaftesbury is in the unhappy predicament of the conservative who seesthe revolutionary consequences of his own discovery. With the introductionof the concept of " aesthetic perception ", the spectator's reaction takeson a significance for evaluation which it had never possessed before. Thegood old days, when aesthetic value is calculated " by rule and line ", arenow numbered. Shaftesbury invoked neo-classicism to arrest the fermentcreated by his own concept, but this was a losing cause. Increasingly afterhis time it is held that appeal to felt aesthetic experience is indispensablein establishing the value-judgment.Shaftesbury saw just two alternatives: either evaluation by rules orelse a vitiating subjectivism. He does not consider the possibility that thesalient normative distinctions-between well-founded and ill-founded judg-ment and between good and bad taste-can be preservedeven when aestheticexperienceis taken to be requisite to the confirmation of the value-judgment.Nor indeed, considering his position in history, could he be expected tohave done so.And this, I think, very nearly epitomizes Shaftesbury's aesthetic. Inbringing to light the distinctive nature of aesthetic perception and in hisaccount of it, Shaftesbury is a thinker of very great originality and consider-able power. However, he does not go far enough. Partly because he isnot a systematic thinker; partly because he has not been weaned awayfrom the old ways of thinking in aesthetics. But those who were to comeafter and who created modern aesthetics, followed the lead which Shaftes-bury had given.

JEROME STOLNITZUniversity of Rochester.

art.stolnitz-on the importance of lord shaftesbury

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